


On The Dancing of Stars

by AbsolXGuardian



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Alphabet Squadron Series - Alexander Freed
Genre: Alien Biology based gender dysphoria, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Space medical transitioning, Trans!Caern Adan, Trans!Chass Na Chadic, canon typical references to prison abuse, canon typical references to torture, discussion of implied transphobia, discussion of non-systemic transphobia (see notes), discussion of paternal transphobia, discussion of religious abuse/cult tactics, lack of access to hormones, non-consensual outing (with no negative conquences), references to anti-alien medical basis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 10:01:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24967879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AbsolXGuardian/pseuds/AbsolXGuardian
Summary: A few vignettes about Chass na Chadic being a transwoman during her time with Alphabet Squadron and the Children of the Empty Sun.
Relationships: Caern Adan & IT-O
Kudos: 2





	On The Dancing of Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Canonically, there's no transphobia in Star Wars. However, the Inheritors of the Crystal, the cult Chass spent some of her childhood with isn't too big on any kind of personal expression. So Chass experiences push back from the cult and her mother about transitioning for that reason. But I understand it might be too similar to someone's own experience even if the core reason is different, hence why "non-systemic transphobia" is a tag.
> 
> Yes, I know I should be working on the next installment for my TMA series, but I just keep hitting writer's block specifically for plotting it out. And I wanted to write something for Pride Month. When the first book came out, my friend joked that Alphabet Squadron could be an alternate name for the LGBTQ+ community. This fic began with me planning vignettes detailing with the gender/sexualities of all of Alphabet Squadron. But only Chass and Adan's really worked, and Shadow Fall inspired another scene for Chass, so I decided to just make a Chass centric fic.

"Ito," Caern Adan asked, "what's this entry on the working group's requisition request for?"

The torture-turned therapy droid broke out of its own invisible data analysis to float over to Adan's desk, and looked at the datapad Adan was holding.

"Lek-covsof is the artificial feminizing hormone and associated blocker compatible with the laetus group of humanoids, including Twi'leks, Togruta, and several other species, typically characterized by brightly colored skin and head adornments."

Adan quickly put together what IT-O meant, a bit embarrassed it hadn't come up in the background research he'd already conducted on all of the members of his working group. But with how private of a person Chass seemed, it made sense it hadn't made it into records beside more important things like her service history.

"Would Theelin be included in the laetus group?" Adan asked, already knowing the answer, but wanting to match his droid's professionalism.

"That would be correct."

"So is there another name we should be looking for Chass' past under?" Always tethered to a central goal, Adan quickly disregarded supply concerns to focus back to his second most important goal after eliminating Shadow Wing- knowing as much as he could about his operatives. Records regarding Chass prior to her enlistment with the Cavern Angels were non-existent. This wouldn't have bothered most Alliance commanders, and even Adan should have gotten used to such blank spots, but the New Republic had secured many Imperial civilian records databases from liberated planets in these months after Endor. New Republic Intelligence didn't even know Chass' homeplanet. IT-O being programmed to ignore standard rules regarding confidentiality didn't help, as Chass had yet to confide in the droid.

"None that I am aware of. The _Lodestar_ also lacks connection to any HoloNet channels containing information that might indicate if Chass is a name that would typically be given to Theelins assigned male at birth. I have way to know if Chass is Miss Na Chadic's birth name or not."

"You've done your research." Pride made its way through Adan's voice.

"Chass made her requisition request to me privately after exhausting the store of injections she kept inside her B-Wing. After filing the request, I proceeded to see if more background information on her could be gleaned with the knowledge of her originally misassigned gender."

"She kept injections in her B-Wing?" Adan was confused. Even if the pilot needed them, transition hormones were not a standard part of emergency medkits.

"I made a note of that myself. Keeping a supply of injections inside her ship, rather then solely on the _Hellion's Dare_ indicates that she experiences a high level of physical gender dysphoria, as well of a level of anxiety around being separated from her squadron, or being one of its sole survivors. Such behavior would be consistent with her service history."

Adan chuckled. "Well she ended up being proven right. I'm glad she didn't need to requisition more hormones when General Syndulla wasn't sure if she'd even service my group's ships."

"Speaking of which," Adan turned back to the list on his datapad. All of the other items- ship parts and ration allotments- had been marked by the ship's quartermasters with _approved_ or _unavailable_ , except for Chass' hormone request, which claimed to be awaiting further review. While everyone understood the importance of transition medical care, it naturally took a back seat to matters of life and death. Commanders were more concerned with making sure they had bacta, not hormones. "Why doesn't Chass have an implant?"

"It's hard to find services selling hormonal implants outside of the Core," IT-O replied, sounding almost patronizing through his mechanical voice, "Even more so for aliens. There simply aren't that many produced, not to mention that since installation considered a psychiatric procedure, most medical droids do not know how to preform them. For those living on the edges of society, the only possible tactic is to purchase as many injections with the longest effective periods possible, even if it results in them spending more credits then someone would with an implant over the years."

Adan was embarrassed to admit to himself, that he didn't know that. He was born on Coruscant, high up enough that he saw the sun each day, even if his apartment was a few levels down. And when assignments took him away from Coruscant, away from the Core even, it was to financial capitals like Scipio or Cantonica. If his own implant were damaged or he missed a maintenance appointment, he could have arranged an emergency one wherever his old job as finical journalist could have taken him. In his mind, injections were for people still actively transitioning, just trying to get to the right hormone levels so they could get an implant to convert their natural hormones into the kind they desired for upkeep. He should have also realized that different species would of course have different hormones and no artificial hormone could work for all of them. Balosars were near-human, so he just took testosterone to transition. 

He thought about what it would have been like if he didn't have the luxury of being arrested by the Empire with an implant already inside him. There was no version of the universe where the Imps would care if he had the right hormones. The idea was laughable. They had tortured him regularly, and back when he shared a cell with other prisoners, he had seen more than one die of some disease or another without ever getting to see a medical droid. It had taken a few weeks of freedom for Adan to even realize that his implant was so long due for maintenance that it must have failed towards the end of his own imprisonment. 

"Caern?" IT-O broke Adan out of his own thoughts, as the reminder of the trauma he had suffered at Imperial hands threatened to drag him down.

"Sorry," Adan tapped on the entree for the disputed hormone request and typed out a short message indicating his own approval. He considered mentioning that supply should work on procuring an implant for Chass as well, but he realized that would go to far. He sure didn't want to tip his hand to the working group that IT-O would report anything they said to the droid back to him, should it deem such information relevant. Besides, if IT-O was right about most medical droids not knowing how to install them, the surgery would fall to IT-O and all his psychiatric knowledge. Chass would never allow that. Adan didn't even think he would, if he ever needed a fresh installation or the maintenance was beyond the Lodestar's medical droids' capabilities.

The New Republic was supposed to be a proper government. It could provide its people with their hormones.

* * *

Chass na Chadic had been born Chass da Chadic. She didn't know if Chass was normally a unisex name, or a firmly masculine one. Or if it was even Theelin. It didn't matter, it was her's. It was always hers.

But Chadic was not. Chadic was her mother's name. And Chadic had named her child in the style of traditional Theelins, or so she claimed. And thus, Chass was first dubbed Chass, son of Chadic.

It had taken Chass until she was thirteen to identify why she hated that name so much. At first, she thought it was because of how her mother's obsession with her own idea of a historical pre-diasporic Theelin culture made their life so much harder. In this case, when Imperial forms asked for first name, last name- no spaces, just two words. No more, no less.

But over time, Chass grew into the Theelin identity. She claimed that gift from her mother with bold defiance, and wore the matronym like a scar. No, it was the son of part that was the problem.

Chass first learned that there were people whose genders had been misassigned with the Inheritors of the Crystal. The entire cult had gathered for the public denouncement of one of their own. A fellow member, a human man, had snuck out of the compound so his implant could receive maintenance, after his request for leave had been denied. The reason for his leaving the compound meant nothing to the Prophet. If he had snuck out to do anything else (other then commit the more serious crime of meeting up with someone from his old life), the humiliating beration and two weeks of the rest of the cult pretending he was invisible would be the same. 

Still, Chass asked her mother afterward what the man meant by implant and why the compound's own medical droid wasn't allowed to fix the man's. Chadic answered, and Chass began to put things together.

Once the man's censure had expired, Chass spent all her free time talking with him about gender, carefully doing their best to not explicitly break the rule banning later discussion of a crime against the Cosmic Force. The other members of the cult still used the right name and pronouns for the man, but there was a secret hurt in him Chass sometimes caught glimpses of, ever since the denouncement. 

Once everything finally made sense to Chass, she told her mother. When she did, Chadic was with the Prophet. But there was no reason to dismiss him. All of the Inheritors were family. So Chass announced that it had been a mistake to dub her a boy. From now on she would wear the feminine robes and the other cultists would call her sister.

And the Prophet disallowed it. He said it was not in the will of the Cosmic Force. He said it in the way he did when he disallowed certain relationships or people doing certain tasks, all always seemingly at a whim. Later, Chass would figure out why. It had nothing to do specifically with her asserting her actual gender. That kind of barbarity was only present on uncontacted planets. It was about control. Once you joined the Inheritors, he was the one who made the big choices for you. 

Chass' mother went along with what the Prophet said, like she always did. And that was what caused Chass to gather her few belongings and run out into the Nar Shadda night at her first chance. There were other factors, of course, but that was the one that tore the wool away from Chass' eyes, and allowed her to see the rest.

When she signed on as a crew member to the first ship she could find departing Nar Shadda, she gave her name as Chass na Chadic.

Chass, daughter of Chadic.

* * *

Chass stared at the hand mirror, while sitting in her bunk in the Children of the Empty Sun's compound. She stared at her horns, horrifically fascinated by them, unable to bring herself to look away.

They had gotten sharper, but not by much. She doubted even another Theelin would have noticed, but she did, and it filled her stomach with a sick feeling and her hands with rage that tempted her to break each horn into stubs, in spite of how much that would hurt. She ran her hand over one of the front-most horns, smooth like lacquered wood. Her dysphoria deepened as she realized the male typical waxy covering had developed on her horns, over its more natural calloused feeling.

Unlike other similarly horned species, such as the Zabarak, Theelin horns were more similar to the leeku of Twi'lek. They were a bundles of nerves, but especially in males, layers of callous like skin would form over them. With the masculinizing hormone, they would even grown longer. Although these additions would be more flesh then nerve. 

Chass hated it, and had to resist throwing the mirror against the wall of her small room. Since Pandem Nai, the Lodestar had enough access to lek-covsof that she had fully refilled the emergency supply box she kept under her seat with injections. In that box she also had, for situations like this, the kind of rough stone used in spas on callouses. It would have been a tedious, frequent, and mildly painful process, but even if Chass had lost access to injections- like she had many times before joining the Rebellion- she could at least keep her horns shorter, to alleviate that sick feeling every time she caught a glimpse of how long they had become- even if most humans wouldn't recognize Theelin sexual dimorphism and even if they assumed she was male, they'd of course accept a correction with grace. But the injections weren't to make others see her as female. They were to make it so she looked like one to herself.

And while she could file down her horns, there was no clever non-hormonal solution for the pheromones. Theelin pheromones weren't what most humans thought of when they heard the word. They didn't influence other's emotions like the Zeltron did. They were just a signalling mechanism for each-other. Chass learned and internalized how the pheromone worked from the other Theelins, who like her mother, had joined the Inheritors seeking their lost religion in a cult leader who just happened to share their species. Maybe if that had never happened, Chass would have just realized she smelled different then her mother as she grew older, and attached no greater significance to it.

But no, she learned what the pheromones, primal signs of sexual ability, indicated. She could gleam another Theelin's general health, sex (well really hormone ratio), and level of fertility just through smell. Chass knew what to expect to smell like when she went through puberty, but the reality of it still hit her when she was struck by a pervading smell of _maleness_ that she could never escape.

When that smell began to creep back during her time with the Children, she showered- with actual water- as often as she was allowed. Luckily, the cult had put up curtains to divide the communal shower room, more privacy than she had been permitted with the inheritors.

While on the injections, she'd smell like a fertile female. She wasn't actually fertile. The injections gave her the hormones, sure, but she just didn't have the equipment. Trading favors, she had managed to get external surgeries from two very shady Frigosian surgeons on Takodana who probably spent most of their time remaking the faces of wanted criminals and fixing up scars from illegal weapons. Once the painkiller had worn off, she was overjoyed and could finally find solace in something permanent during those long dark days when her injections had worn off. But there had been no reason to get internal surgeries as well. Those were way more complicated and way more expensive. And it wasn't like she'd even see what they changed. 

Chass realized that she had gotten complacent, gotten used to not having to question where she'd get her next injections. Just like how with the Rebellion, at least by the time she joined, you wouldn't have to worry about food. She'd gotten soft, forgotten about when she used to worry about both. Sure there had been near misses, times when Chass' emergency supply was empty due to lack of surplus. But they'd always find something, secure some medical supply line. The laetus group of aliens was likely the second most common group of species in the galaxy, after the human and near-human group. So some Alliance ship somewhere would find plenty of lek-covsof among a mess of bacta, chemicals, and spare prosthetics. 

The injection Chass was on had been nearing the end of its effective stage when Alphabet had fought Shadow Wing over Triothe. Not enough for even her to notice. At that point only reminder was kept in the chronometer of her personal datapad. Now her injections and even her stone were floating somewhere in space, sitting next to her datachips.

Chass had to admit to herself that she probably didn't even smell that masculine to a Theelin who wasn't her. It had only been a few weeks, and the longer one has been on blockers, the longer it takes for their natural hormones to bounce back. She probably smelled like the nuetrois who also wanted their hormones between the norms.

But such a thing was a cold comfort.

The sounding of the dinner "bell", actually a scavenged speaker set on-top of the Children's reclaimed palace, broke Chass from her despair. She managed to bring herself to halfheartedly toss the mirror onto her bed. She may have been the most junior member of the cult, but she'd be chastised (just chastised, it wasn't a euphemism for a formal punishment, just a more senior member telling her off) for not being in place to receive the meal even when she was at the end of the line.

Chass wrenched herself away from her dysphoria, determined to bury it under more practical emotions. Even the constant memories the Children brought back regarding the Inheritors would be more useful. If she could find a hyperspace viable vehicle, then she could get the hormones she so desperately desired. Triothe was lost to the New Republic and _the people she would not think about_ were dead, but she could find another New Republic battle group. Be the sole survivor once again. That seemed to be the role the universe had given her.

* * *

When she was roaring skyward, feeling once more like Chass na Chadic, she vowed to never again think of her time on Catadra or her experiences with the Children of the Empty Sun. The thoughts and experiences would tear off her and flutter in her wake and burn up in the atmosphere and she would be purged, ready to pursue vengeance—to bring the wrath of the New Republic down upon Shadow Wing and face whatever that battle had to offer.

She didn’t need Gruyver or Let’ij or Nukita. She didn’t need disquisitions or meals with insipid fanatics. She certainly didn't need her body betraying her and inflicting dysphoria that threatened to tear her apart.

She reached under her seat and discovered that her slugthrower and her box of music chips were gone. In their place she found a small metal case, which—once squeezed between her hips as she maneuvered one-handed—she opened and discovered held another set of datachips. These were labeled 'Holographic Lecture' and numbered several dozen.

She slapped the case shut and shoved it back beneath her seat. Desperately, to try to hold back the petty grief that threatened to burst out, she tried to find the second box she kept in her B-Wing, father back, which she never pulled out while flying. Her heart dropped as her hand brushed the empty space that normally held the standard B-Wing emergency medkit/supplies box, but it soared again as it found a battered box that had once been ornately decorated. Clumsily, she brought that box to her lap and opened it. There they were, her injections, protected by their standard rubber casing. On top of it sat Chass' stolen rock. 

That at least was a mercy. But that joy was only temporary, as Chass realized what she had to do, and she flew off into the dark.

**Author's Note:**

> The last scene is a modified version of a scene from Shadow Fall, with me adding extra sentences incorporating the themes from this fic.  
> It was very interesting figuring out worldbuilding for the state of medically transitioning in the Star Wars universe. The reason why there are still barriers for people to transition in this transphobia-free galaxy is because capitalism sure as hell still exists, so it's just standard barriers to healthcare. For clarity, implants take someone's natural hormones and convert them into the hormones they'd like. About every two years they require maintenance, which can be preformed by most medical droids. It primarily consists of moving it to a different location with less scar tissue around it (a real life problem with medical implants) and maybe refilling depleted enzyme supplies. How does it work? Sci-fi hand-wave tech, that's how. Injections, for someone who is just up-keeping their transition rather then using increasingly high doses can have times between doses (effective periods) from a week to three months depending on the brand. 
> 
> I liked getting to develop Theelin biology/culture, as well as how the medical system deals with having to treat so many different species. The laetus group is my invention. It's just what google translate tells me the Latin word is for "colorful" and it sounds space-y enough. 
> 
> It was also a fun challenge to write about trans stuff without being allowed to use any of the labels from our world. I was inspired by how in EK Johnson's book Afterward, rather then being explained as her being born in the wrong body or something, a transwoman character is described as being misidentified by the midwife when she was born. I liked the idea of describing transness focusing on society, rather than the person's body making the mistake. Which is why the closest term there is to "transgender person" is "person whose gender was misassigned". Nuetrois is likely the Star Wars term for "non-binary person". It's an older term from our world that fell out of fashion, but it sounds space-y and was used in the short story Incident Report.
> 
> The cryptosurgeons at Maz's castle are actually canon. They're from the short story The Face of Evil. They're Frigosians, the same little yellow bird species as the janitor from Resistance.


End file.
